Meet Donna Strickland, The 1st Female Winner Of The Nobel Physics Prize In 55 Years

The Nobel Prize has been around for 117 years. Yet, in that time, only two women have ever claimed the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics.

This week, we finally saw the third, after a gap of 55 years since the last woman received the honour in 1963.

Reuters

Donna Strickland, from the University of Waterloo in Canada, was just awarded the Physics prize for her work in laser physics alongside Gerard Mourou from the École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France. The two jointly share the prize with Arthur Ashkin from the Bell Laboratories in the US.

In 117 years 892 laureates have claimed the Nobel prize, yet only 48 of them have been women. One of the first women to ever receive a Nobel Prize was the inimitable Marie Curie in 1903, which was also the first time the physics prize was awarded to a woman, for discovering radioactivity. Curie went on to also claim a Nobel Prize in Chemistry later in 1911, the first person to ever claim two of the honour. The second woman to claim the Nobel Physics Prize was Maria Goeppert Mayer, a nuclear physicist, for her work outlining the structure of the atomic nucleus. That was in 1963, 55 years ago.

What earned the prize?

To win the 2018 prize, Dr Strickland and Dr Mourou developed a way for us to use short burst lasers, using a technique they call Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA). It was impossible to power up laser pulses before this because they would destroy the material amplifying them. This new technique though makes them more stable, allowing the lasers to be used for various purposes like cancer treatment, and the millions of corrective laser eye surgeries performed each year.

For his part, Ashkin developed a laser technique he called “optical tweezers”, which sounds like a science fiction tale. His technology manipulates light particles, using them to create a pressure that allowed it to move objects. Basically, the technology uses light to pick up and move things around. Today, this is used in research to pick up miniscule things from bacteria, to living cells, to even atoms.

The award is, totaling about $998,600, is split between the three, with half to Ashkin and half to be shared between Strickland and Mourou.

Upending the patriarchy

In conversations with the media, Dr Strickland has expressed her surprise when her name was announced at the Nobel ceremony earlier this week. She says that, even though she’s always been treated like an equal in her field, she didn’t expect the award because it’s been so long since a woman won.

BREAKING NEWS⁰The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the #NobelPrize in Physics 2018 “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” with one half to Arthur Ashkin and the other half jointly to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland. pic.twitter.com/PK08SnUslK

It is a minor victory for women in science though, especially in the light of how many in STEM still think today. Just a few days ago in fact, a physicist named Prof Alessandro Strumia from the Pisa University gave a lecture at the Cern particle physics lab during a workshop. In it, he said physics was “built by men, not by invitation.” His comments were specifically regarding his claims that women were being hired for scientific jobs over more capable men to suit a gender politics agenda. Regarded as highly offensive, Strumia faced backlash from a large portion of the community, including as suspension from his work at Cern.

Dr Strickland however, called the physicist’s remarks “silly”, saying she’s never paid much heed to the like.